Chapter Twenty-Five

Stella and Adam had packed up and returned home a few days ago. Riley didn’t blame her. She said that Cobb Hill was a place that she just wasn’t ready to tackle.

He had considered not continuing to think of Estill County as his home. He was young. He could move to Cincinnati and be closer to his son. But it didn’t appear that he would be getting any closer to Stella. He had put his foot in his mouth and out of desperation had told her how he felt about her.

She had cut him down.

Too much had happened too soon and he’d chosen the wrong time to reveal his feelings. It had come off sounding as if he just didn’t want her to leave. He hadn’t wanted her to leave, not like that. But how could he argue against her reasoning?

Bodie had asked him again to return to the garage and this time Riley didn’t spit on him. He said he would as long as he allowed him two weeks for Mr. Harper to find a replacement for him at the hardware store.

One thing that hit home after everything that had happened this summer is that he had learned that he couldn’t just sit quietly by and let the world go crazy around him. He had to set some things right—at least those things in his reach.

The Sunday after Stella and Adam left he went to LovingCare to visit his granny. As he walked to the lounge he thought about her black friend. But back when she lived at home she referred to blacks as niggers and expressed nothing but distaste for them. What was real? Because one side of her personality wasn’t.

Granny was staring at her hands and his expression saddened. He knelt beside her and sighed. “Hi granny.”

She looked up at him in confusion. “Riley?”

He smiled. “Yeah it’s me.” He took her hand and kissed her crooked knuckles. Jewel Pranger looked at him and smiled but still seemed unsure. “Where am I, Riley? This ain’t my house, is it?”

“No granny. You live in a different home now. You live with some of your friends in an elder care facility.”

“Okay…” she said after a few moments.

“Granny…” he took a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you something.”

“Okay.” She said, although he wasn’t sure if she really understood him.

“I have a son.”

“You do?” She asked. She smiled. “That’s good, Riley. Is the mama a nice lady?”

Riley nodded. “She is. She’s a strong woman. She has a lot of ways like you granny.”

“We a family of strong people.” Jewel said. Her eyes seemed to clear a bit.

“You think so?” He asked doubtfully.

“Oh yeah! You had to be strong back in those days. You didn’t have no grocery stores where you could just pick up a chicken. You had to wring its neck and pluck its feather just to eat. Then you had to make it stretch between your family and your husbands ma and pa.”

He listened. “Granny my son is African American.”

“What?” She asked in confusion.

“My son is black.”

“Oh…” she said distantly. “You better not tell your daddy. Wait,” she frowned. “Are you Riley?”

He nodded. “Yes ma’am.”

“Oh. Your son is black, you say? I’m not sure if I understand all of this.”

“Granny you never liked blacks when I was coming up. But you have a black friend now.”

She frowned at him. “You can’t like blacks and survive in our family. You see how my daddy beat my mama? He beat us kids the same way. You did what my daddy said or you got beat down. If my daddy called a nigger a nigger than he was a nigger.”

Riley looked at a black attendant that had overheard her. “Grandma, your daddy is long dead. And there is no one around that will force you to think like that. If you want to like blacks then you can. But whether you do or don’t, please stop using that word. The people here don’t like it.”

Jewel frowned. “No. It’s not the right word. It’s a bad thing to say.” She looked at him and smiled. “Riley? Is that you?” She reached out and patted his beard. “Such a handsome young man.”

He smiled. “I’m not that handsome, granny.”

“Hush you! You got the Pranger eyes.”

He smiled. “So does my son.”

“Oh yes, you have a son. But you can’t tell your daddy that he’s a black. Your Uncle Lloyd might hurt him. Your Uncle Lloyd is just like my daddy. He hurt the niggers.”

“Granny that word…we don’t use that anymore. It hurts people. It hurts the people that work here and they are here to help you.” Jewel blinked and looked around at all the black faces.

“Oh my…” She covered her face with a shaky hand. “Sometimes I forget things. I forget where I am.”

“I know granny.” He held her hand. “Granny, I have to ask you something.”

“Sure, Riley. Are you okay?”

“Yes. But…it’s about Sully and the rest of them.”

“Mmm,” she pursed her lips into one of distaste.

“Why don’t you like Sully?”

“I don’t like Lloyd. God knows he’s my son but he’s evil. He’s as evil as my own daddy was. His kids didn’t fall far from the tree!” She met his eyes and they were clear. “I didn’t want any of them around you, Riley. They are a bad lot. When Sully touched you that time, I knew he would infect you with his ways. All of them got something off about ‘em. They lay up with any man and breed like rabbits.”

Riley’s face began to pale. He remembered Uncle Lloyd punching and punching and calling Sully a faggot. No son of mine…

He had been about six years old and all the boys had been wrestling. Sully always played with them and he liked him because he didn’t act like he was too good to play with them. But when they were playing Sully had held him too close and wouldn’t let him ago. He rubbed his dick against him and it was hard. Bobby hadn’t known what was happening and had jumped playfully on Sully who had then released Riley.

He had just been confused. He hadn’t meant to tell on Sully. He told his mama about what had happened and his mama had told daddy. Daddy must have told Uncle Lloyd because he came raging into the house where Sully and his brothers and sisters usually came to spend the day during summer months.

Uncle Lloyd had grabbed Sully and started beating him right there in the kitchen where they all were getting a drink of water.

You touch another little kid you little faggot…

And the beating had continued until he had finally collapsed to the floor, his face unrecognizable. Nobody did anything. His mama had turned away. His daddy had just looked disgusted. But Uncle Lloyd had looked like he was enjoying himself.

Afterwards he had wanted to tell Sully how sorry that he was. He was so sorry for telling on him. He didn’t even know if Sully realized that he was the reason that he’d been beaten. After that Sully was only ‘yes sir, no sir’ when it came to his father. All the kids were and not just the kids, so was Uncle Lloyd’s wife Aunt Eva. Once he heard daddy and uncle Lloyd on the porch drinking and uncle Lloyd had said that Aunt Eva was ugly as a dog but she let him do whatever he wanted in bed. Daddy had told him to be quiet because mama and aunt Eva were sitting right there. Aunt Eva said nothing, she just looked down in shame.

He realized that his eyes were wet. “Why didn’t you stand up for Sully?” He asked.

“Sully?” His grandmother said dismissively. “Because his father had already ruined him.”

 

 

Sully answered the door of his trailer in surprise. Riley was the last person that he expected to see visiting him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked and let a mouthful of chew go flying to the floor of the porch.

“I wanted to talk to you. Try to clear the air about some things.”

Sully regarded him for a moment before pushing open the door to allow him inside the trailer.

“Get us a beer out of the fridge,” Sully instructed while returning to his seat in his armchair. When Riley returned with the brews Sully used the edge of the side table to pop the top. He took a swig and belched. He studied his cousin who took a seat on the couch, still holding his unopened bottle.

“What’s on your mind? I heard about what Brady did, jumping you at the fair. I told you.”

Riley scowled. “I don’t give a shit about Brady.”

“Well, that’s good. He sure as hell don’t like you no more.”

“I ain’t here to talk about none of that. My son is off the mountain so he can feel free to come at me with all he got. I came here to talk to you about something else.”

“What?”

Riley licked his lips. He stared at Sully. “That time uncle Lloyd beat you. That was my fault.”

Sully didn’t speak, but his brow drew together.

“I told my mama about us wrestling and…how I felt your boner poking against me. I didn’t…I wasn’t tattling or anything. But she told daddy and-”

“Shit. What the fuck?” Sully scowled at Riley. “You think that was your fault?”

Riley swallowed. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Sully waved his words away. “My daddy beat my ass almost every day of my goddamn life. He called me nigger, faggot, bitch, pussy…” He shook his head. “Ain’t your fault that he did anything that he did.” Sully took a long drink. “His ass is in prison so look who the faggot is now.” He chuckled mirthlessly, then he frowned at his cousin. “Why are you even thinking about any of that?”

“Sully,” he scrubbed his hands across his face before he could meet his cousin’s eyes again. “Nobody in our family did shit to help any of y’all…not even your own grandma and grandpa!”

Sully sighed. “That’s because granny’s pa did the same thing to her and to her husband and to their kids. By the time your daddy was born they had their own house. She protected your Daddy. My daddy thought he was a pussy. And he was.”

Riley finally removed the cap from his bottle and he took a long drink of the cold beer.

“Why do you believe any thing that came out of the mouths of those people?” Riley finally asked. “They weren’t smart. They were just a bunch of bullies that couldn’t do anything but hurt their own women and children!”

“My daddy was a son of a bitch,” Sully pointed a finger at his cousin, “but he was far from stupid. We survived when there wasn’t shit to eat, and barely a shack to call a home. We survived it!”

“You give him credit for that? He fucking drank away all y’all money!”

“Hey!” Sully jumped to his feet. “Watch it, Riley! There’s a lot that you don’t know, that you don’t understand!”

“Then tell me, cousin. Make me understand.”

Sully frowned and sat down without another word. He shook his head. “You had it good, but you don’t know it. You had food everyday. You had a place to sleep and you had a mama and daddy and a granny and grandpa. I had to work for everything I got, even if it was a morsel of food. But I was taught to be proud. When someone looked down at me I beat the shit out of ‘em. Fear and respect ain’t that far apart.”

“Being a bully doesn’t make you anything special, you know. So you run around trying to make other people’s lives harder. Why? You know what it’s like to work for everything you got-”

“You still talking about blacks? Boy it’s a scientific fact that Aryans are the superior race-”

“You don’t believe that.” Riley said simply. “You just had to believe that so that you could have a reason not to kill yourself. You found a bunch of people that talked the same shit and you called those boys family.”

“You think you’re the same as a Jew?” Riley spat.

“You believed what your daddy beat into you, because it was the only way to survive. It was the only way to cope. That’s why y’all never went too far away from your daddy or his abuse.”

Sully glared at his cousin. “You think cuz you went to college that you’re some type of psychologist?”

“You found a way to cope, to accept him, to even love him. He taught you ugliness-”

“I didn’t love that bastard!” Riley was back on his feet. “I hated him! I hated what he did to me and my mama and my brothers and sisters. We are fucking survivors of a war that you or your family knew nothing about! I fought to survive!”

“But you learned from him! You learned to be like him!”

Sully glared at Riley.

“Are you proud to be like him?” Riley demanded.

“People respected him.” Sully said. His eyes were red.

“No they didn’t. They were scared of him-”

“Same thing.” A tear dripped from Sully’s eyes but he didn’t notice. Riley did, though.

“He’s in prison for killing people, raping and killing people—and not black people, white people. He wasn’t superior. He was a monster.”

Sully finally realized that there were tears in his eyes and he quickly wiped them away and took his seat. “I never said he wasn’t a monster. And I don’t want to be like him. I just want to be respected!”

“Respect is earned, cousin.”

Sully stared at the television screen. “I’m better than mongrels. I’m better than niggers. I’m better than Jews.” He said it as if it was a chant.

Riley finally stood. He headed for the door but when he was behind Sully’s chair he placed a hand on the man’s shoulder.

“I love you.” He quickly left. He knew then that he would never talk to Sully again.